ICL says Fridges are Office 2000 compliant

It must be cool, then…

ICL opened the doors to the world’s first Office 2000 fridge freezer in Nice today although it quickly denied it was moving into the mainstream consumer durables market. The fridge is a dark blue Electrolux model with wooden handles with an ICL PC integrated into the door. The touch-screen PC enables the less than average fridge freezer user to scan the bar code of produce -- in ICL's case a small bottle of Evian and a number of small Stella Artois bottles of beer -- and then consume it. In the meantime, the PC, already aware of the number of bottles inside the fridge through pre-programming and not by automatic sensor, subtracts the correct number and then dials-up Tescos using Internet Explorer 5.0 to re-order beer when supplies fall low. The fridge PC also enables users to send and browse email through a touch-screen keyboard using Outlook, pay bills on line, conduct Internet banking business, watch TV and browse through loyalty card offers from the local supermarket. David Wright, ICL's business development manager said there are only three of these fridges in the world and there is no price. "It's not a product, it's just for demonstration purposes." The fridge got its first mention at the keynote address by Kurt DelBene when he brought on ICL's director of Enterprise Infrastructure, Graham Taylor, to talk about how Office 2000 solved his collaborative problems. Taylor went on to talk about the fridge being full of beer, at which point DelBene popped-in “you’re obviously very excited about this..." "I love beer," said Taylor. ®